John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 10 blogs containing over 8000 articles with John having written over 4000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 16 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John is co-founder of InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit and LinkedIn.

A favorite topic of this blog has been Meaningful Use and it will likely continue to be a popular topic well into the future. As such, we’re all sitting around waiting to hear the word from CMS on the final rule for Meaningful Use. Doctors are waiting for it so they can select an EMR or modify their current EMR to meet the guidelines. EMR vendors are waiting for it so they can say that their EMR software can meet the meaningful use guidelines. RECs are waiting for it so that they can help doctors reach meaningful use. We’re all just waiting to see what’s going to come out.

Fierce EMR reported that the Meaningful Use final rule will be published by July 14th. Here’s a couple quotes from that report:

FierceEMR spoke with a CMS official directly involved in writing and publishing the final regulation, and she assures us that although there’s no “official” publication date (CMS missed its own self-imposed June 30 deadline), “I would be very surprised if it’s published any later than July 14.”

Not a very firm commitment to July 14th, but it should be around that date I imagine.

“We hoped to have it out by the end of June, but it’s looking more like mid-July,” the official told us this week. “There are so many moving parts and so many people are involved. This is a long regulation.” No doubt! The proposed rule was thicker than many novels. We expect nothing less from the final reg.

That wasn’t quite the novel I was hoping to read this summer, but it will be nice to have something final.

All of this said, we may be waiting for nothing. First, because I don’t think that we’ll see any real meaningful changes to the regulation. Plus, I think the regulation will still be missing much of the meat and potatoes that will be involved in managing that regulation. There will still be a lot of practical details needed and interpretation of the regulation to be done. At least if it’s the government process that I know.

6 responses to "Meaningful Use Rule by July 14th"

Thanks for the heads-up: I dutifully logged on this past weekend looking for the predicted final rule, only to move on to the rest of my vacation when I didn’t see anything. Of course, we’re all waiting to see just How “meaningful” the final rule and any changes made will be.

I’d personally just like for the waiting game to be over; besides, the summer reading so far hasn’t been so exciting. I’m tired of hearing about the World Cup (let alone annoying South African horns), and the newest spy saga is incredibly dissapointing. Ten years in this country and these Russians couldn’t steal anything important? Time was a KGB agent could bring the world to its needs in the amount of time it took to get to the second commerical break.

Glad to know your priorities. 😉 I will say the best WC story I heard was last night on NPR, about a German octopus who successfully predicted the outcome of every game Germany played. Hmm, maybe I should contact the local aquarium and ask them when the MU rule will be released.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services:
WHAT: CMS and ONC will host a press briefing to announce the final rules on Meaningful Use and Standards and Certification under the HITECH Act’s Electronic Health Records (EHR) incentive program.